


Picking A Colour

by Bright_Days (Mirradin)



Series: Losing and Lost [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Child slavery, Dehumanisation, Gen, Human AU, Parent-Child separation, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-19 10:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1465276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirradin/pseuds/Bright_Days
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jake goes to the slave breeder to find a present for his daughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Picking A Colour

The inner holding pens of Sadiq’s business were dark and cool, with the light from a few well-placed windows and oil lamps to let the slaves be seen. It was a welcome relief on Jake Kirkland’s aching eyes. He blinked as he stepped inside, waiting for his vision to adjust, and pulled at his shirt collar where it was sticking to his neck.  
  
“You said your daughter,” Sadiq said, striding ahead of him. “How old?”  
  
“Matilda? Eleven.” Jake scanned the rows of cages as he walked after Sadiq. Basic accommodation for a breeder: Small, plain cages, each with a low cot, and nowhere to hide. “Pretty short for her age, we were hoping for something on the small side. The Italian I got for her brother’s pretty good-natured, do you have any more from that line?”  
  
“I wish I did.” Sadiq snatched a bunch of keys off a hook and headed towards the back wall. The figures inside the cages shrank back as they passed. “You got the last one. The sire got into a scrap with my other primary male a few years after that one was born and I ended up losing both of them.” He made a displeased sound. “I’d just bought a new Maltese dam, too. I found a new Greek male to replace him, pretty well-behaved but none of his kids are old enough yet. Small side … here.”  
  
He stopped in front of one of the cages. The girl sitting on the cot inside glanced up at the two of them through a thick-rimmed pair of glasses, and then lowered her gaze to the floor. At Sadiq’s harsh command she stood up nervously and walked slowly to the bars, her shoulders hunched up around her ears.   
  
As soon as she reached the door, Sadiq grabbed her chin and forced her head up, showing her face. “What do you think?”  
  
Jake took his time looking the slave over. Long, thick blonde hair draped over her shoulders; her eyes, behind the thick glasses, were a nice shade of blue. There was plenty of colour in her cheeks and she was built solidly enough. But it was her age that was the deciding factor: Mid-to-late teens. This girl had to be a foot and a half taller than Matilda. He shook his head. “Too old.”  
  
Sadiq let go of the girl’s jaw and she immediately fled to the back of the cage, curling up on the bed. “Well, I’ve got a couple of younger ones, but they’re both still with their dams. This way.”  
  
The cages in the next room were wider, with larger beds to fit the mothers and their growing children. Even with the pleasant scented oil lamps, this room smelled of human habitation; Jake would have wrinkled his nose if he wasn’t used to far worse smells. Sadiq stopped in front of the first cage.  
  
“Ten years old,” he said. “Mother’s Austrian, pretty docile. The sire had very unique colouring, but his temperament was too aggressive, I ended up selling him on. Though if you ask me they get the temper from the mother, I got those Italian kids out of a Spanish breeder, and she’s far better-behaved than the father ever was.”  
  
The woman inside the cage looked up at them. She didn’t look like much at first glance – plain brown hair, her features regular and delicate but not really striking – but the _movement_ , now, that was interesting. Not as fluid as the redheaded Italian kid, but interesting. Controlled. She looked up at them with a controlled gaze, and then down at the pale-haired kid hidden in her arms. And then, before Sadiq ordered her, she gently ushered the child off the bed, took it by the hand, and led it to the door, and Jake’s passing interest in the mother was gone.  
  
The child was small. Probably about Matilda’s size, maybe a hair taller, which put it on the small side for either gender, but he couldn’t tell which sex it was. Sadiq was right about the colouring, too. The long hair – neatly braided, but waist-length even so – was _white_ , a beautiful pale silver, and the eyes peering up at him in the lamplight were purple. Jake glanced at the mother to compare; hers were half-hidden behind glasses, but they were the same shade of lilac. Hmm. Well, it’s a definite possibility. Matilda’s always had an eye for colour.  
  
On the other hand…  
  
“What’s its heat tolerance like?” he asked abruptly. “A councillor a couple of towns over had one coloured a bit like this, said it burned like crazy in our weather.” The pink flush in its cheeks was easy to see; there wasn’t any colour to the skin.  
  
He sensed more than saw Sadiq’s shrug. “I got that one out of the same father. But the only two I’ve got in the right size are Northern stock. That’s the other one.” Jake glanced into the next cage: A stocky boy squinted back from the lap of a woman even taller than Jake. “Northeners burn, everyone knows that. It’ll be fine if your daughter likes staying indoors.”  
  
“Eyesight?”  
  
“Fair. Not as good as it could be.” Jake mentally translated that: Short-sighted, but not enough to bother with glasses.  
  
“Temperament?” The slave had been docile so far, but so far it hadn’t had to do much.  
  
“Quiet. It’s pretty shy, to tell you the truth.” Probably safe, then, and it looked on the skinny side besides. Jake wouldn’t take anything like it for a labourer, but for a house slave, it wasn’t too bad.  
  
One last thing. “Boy or girl? I can’t tell.”  
  
“Male. Though the dam doesn’t seem to notice.” Jake saw the mother’s fingers briefly tighten on the child’s hand.  
  
He glanced at the other boy again. That one was more heavily-built, and if he had his mother’s height then he was going to be a giant when he grew up. It looked back at him fearlessly, which could have been interesting, but in Jake’s experience constantly having to teach a slave its place was tiresome. He might have taken him if he was buying for himself, but while Matilda could hold her own in a scrap, she still wasn’t much of a fighter, and Jake didn’t want to risk it.  
  
“I’ll take him,” he said. The slave shrank back against his mother’s legs.  
  
“Right,” Sadiq said, and unlocked the door. The dam had sunk to her knees and was holding onto the boy’s shoulders, whispering to him in German. “Let go … I said _get off_ \--” Sadiq delivered the words with a hefty blow to the mother’s shoulder that knocked her sideways. The child cringed, and Sadiq hooked two fingers into the plain leather collar and dragged it out, locking the door behind them. The mother lunged forwards and grabbed the bars. “My office is this way.”  
  
“Mama!”  
  
“Johan! Johan, _ich liebe dich_!”  
  
“Is she always this noisy?” Jake asked idly. The boy was twisting in Sadiq’s hold, stumbling along as he tried to look back at his mother.  
  
“She quiets down fast.” Sadiq dragged the boy into the larger holding room and closed the door, cutting off the noise. “It’s not like she remembers them for long. Last time she had twins. Three days after I sold ‘em she looked like they’d never existed.”  
  
“Well, I hope he gets that from her,” Jake half-grumbled. The boy was calling “ _Mama!_ ” over and over, though his voice wasn’t very loud. In Jake’s experience that was normal for the younger ones, but it didn’t make the racket any more fun to put up with. “Quiet, you!”  
  
By the time they reached Sadiq’s office, on the other side of the dusty courtyard, the boy had stopped calling. He stood in trembling silence while Sadiq leafed through records and papers.  
  
“Right, here’s the birth record…” Jake scanned the document while Sadiq grabbed the boy’s arm and turned him around to check the number tattooed across the back of his neck. Mother, fourth-generation slavery; father, born a freeman, one Gilbert Beilschmidt, though of course he’d lost the name along with his rights when he got branded. Then there were the other papers to go through: Health inspections (all clean, mandatory vaccines done), training records (basic, all he could expect for a ten-year-old), and the transfer papers noting the change of ownership. It took ten minutes, while the decrepit fan whirred overhead, and at the end Sadiq handed him a receipt and the ownership certificate. The box for the owner’s stamp was left empty; Sadiq never branded the slaves he bred. Jake would put his own brand on the boy when he got home.  
  
He shook Sadiq’s hand.  
  
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Sadiq said, a grin cracking that weather-worn face.   
  
“Same to you.” Jake snapped his fingers at the slave, which blinked up at him with empty eyes, and then shuffled out after him into the dusty summer sun.

**Author's Note:**

> Characters: Sadiq is Turkey (obviously), Jake is Australia, Matilda is Wy, her unnamed brother is Hutt River (because I couldn’t think of a name for him).   
> The one Australia buys is Kugelmugel, his mother is female Austria (who also had Switzerland and Liechtenstein) and his unseen father is Prussia (who also fathered Iceland with female Norway). The other kids are Monaco (fem!France and Germania’s daughter) and Ladonia (fem!Sweden’s son).   
> The Italian line is Rome’s kids, of which Australia previously bought Seborga (the youngest, and the last one born before Rome and Germania got into a lethal scrap). Their mother is fem!Spain.
> 
> Background to this story: As you probably picked up, most slaves are bred, rather than caught – which is to say, any child born to a slave is automatically a slave itself, and that’s where most slaves come from. Some of them are people enslaved for crimes – Prussia, for example, was enslaved for some pretty vicious acts as a mercenary soldier, hence why he’s described as having a bad temperament. This also prevents too much inbreeding from happening. Austria, on the other hand, is descended from three or four generations of slaves. And if you’re breeding slaves, it’s not too much of a leap to start breeding for traits you want. (Regrettably, there are quite a few ways of forcing two mutually unwilling people to have sex.) In this case, Turkey’s selected for albinism – Prussia actually has several children, but the albino colouring only came out in Iceland and Kugelmugel, because it’s recessive.
> 
> The use of 'dam' and 'sire' for mother and father is cribbed from horse-breeding terms, to emphasise that slaves aren't really thought of as human.
> 
> Austria doesn't 'forget' about her children, although traditionally there are quite a few ways of portraying a group as 'subhuman' and therefore fair game, and that's one of them. She does try to retain her dignity, such as it is, which for her means not showing her owner that he can hurt her.


End file.
